Friday, July 29, 2016

I have a friend who knows a whole lot about old popular music.
Or at least old semi-popular music.
She threw a tune at me that seemed somewhat familiar, but I couldn't quite place it.
She thought it was called "Jingle, Jangle".
I responded with "Do you mean "I've got spurs that Jingle Jangle Jingle?"
She responded in the negative.
Then she started humming the melody.
I recognized it.
It went "Jingle Jangle, Jingy Jong Jangle".
Then she made a whip sound.
I said "It sounds like something from a Disney movie."
I did a search.
Couldn't find me no "Jingle Jangle" from no Disney movie.
Then, for some reason, the voice of Fess Parker entered my head in this regard.
I started searching Fess Parker Disney movies that had songs.
I stumbled across "Westward Ho, The Wagons!"
And there I found a song called "Wringle Wrangle, Jingy Jong Jangle".
That was it.
If I hadn't thought of Fess Parker, I'd still be searching.

For those who might be interested, here are all the lyrics to
"Wringle, Wrangle, Jingy Jong Jangle"

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My books, "Show Runner" and it's sequel, "Show Runner Two", can be found at the Amazon Kindle Store.
Along with the newer ones, "The Man Is Dead", and "Report Cards".
They are all compilations of blog entries that have since been removed from the blog.
So this is the only way you can find them.
You can search by typing in my name, Cindy Williams, Laverne and Shirley, The Odd Couple, or Happy Days.
Check them out.
You don't need a Kindle machine to download them.
Just get the free app from Kindle, and they can be downloaded to an IPhone, IPad, or Blackberry.
The paperbacks, "Mark Rothman's Essays" and my new novel, "I'm Not Garbo" are not e-books.
But they are available for people without Kindle.
I have many readings and signings lined up for those, and the thing about Kindle is you can't sign one.
If you'd like one of the paperbacks, personally autographed, contact me at macchus999@comcast.net
And now, we've got my reading of my "Laverne and Shirley Movie" screenplay on YouTube.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

I worked with Garry Marshall for the better part of seven years in the 70's and early eighties.
I owe him my entire career.
After co-writing a spec script for "The Odd Couple" that got us hired, we lasted eight weeks.
We got hired upon Tony Randall and Jack Klugman's recommendation.
Ironically, neither Tony nor Jack had any knowledge that the other one sent our script to Garry.
But, as Tony and Jack were the lords and masters of all things "Odd Couple", if they wanted us hired,
we were hired.
The problem we had was that we were constantly being re-written by people over us who couldn't hold our pens.
We couldn't convince Tony and Jack of that, so we were fired.
But Garry saw something in us and held out a lifeline to us inviting us to keep attending run-throughs, and telling us that once our contract with our agent was up, that he wanted to manage us.
That was quite a lifeline.
Months later, true to his word, he became our manager and immediately assigned us an "Odd Couple" script to write.
We handed it in, with nobody rewriting us, and it was shot virtually the way we wrote it.
We had been around long enough to realize that this was unprecedented.
It was "hats in the air" time and we quickly became the fair-haired boys again.
It was all Garry's doing.
Garry was one of the funniest people to be around, and easily the smartest person when it came to the
business of show business. It was a constant education.
My strength as a writer was as a story-teller.
Hanging around Garry only enhanced that ability for me.
He had what we called "peripheral story vision".
He knew immediately that if you did something on page 4, it would effect page 56.
It was astounding how accurate he could be with this.
And I eventually learned how to do it.
He went to bat for me when nobody else would.
He got me my job on 'The New Odd Couple" when the head of Paramount wouldn't hear of it.
I'd burned some bridges, including that one, but Garry somehow overcame that and jammed me down his throat.
I was lucky, because part of Garry's business genius was knowing which fights to pick, and which not to. I could have easily fallen into the latter category.
Garry was also, in the best sense, a great bullshit artist.
When he directed Jackie Gleason in "Nothing In Common", he employed the tactic of trying to make
Gleason think that any good idea that Garry had was actually Gleason's idea.
After several of these, Gleason said to him "Gee, I can't wait to wake up tomorrow and see what wonderful idea I come up with". Gleason completely nailed him.
But I digress.
As an actor, Garry's timing was unmatched. He was a joy to watch.
Garry was an absolute giant, and we'll never see his likes again.

My books, "Show Runner" and it's sequel, "Show Runner Two", can be found at the Amazon Kindle Store.
Along with the newer ones, "The Man Is Dead", and "Report Cards".
They are all compilations of blog entries that have since been removed from the blog.
So this is the only way you can find them.
You can search by typing in my name, Cindy Williams, Laverne and Shirley, The Odd Couple, or Happy Days.
Check them out.
You don't need a Kindle machine to download them.
Just get the free app from Kindle, and they can be downloaded to an IPhone, IPad, or Blackberry.
The paperbacks, "Mark Rothman's Essays" and my new novel, "I'm Not Garbo" are not e-books.
But they are available for people without Kindle.
I have many readings and signings lined up for those, and the thing about Kindle is you can't sign one.
If you'd like one of the paperbacks, personally autographed, contact me at macchus999@comcast.net
And now, we've got my reading of my "Laverne and Shirley Movie" screenplay on YouTube.
The phone number for tickets for my play, "Who Wants Fame?" beginning July 30th in Detroit, is 248-579-3365. If you're in the area, you'll have a great time.
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Friday, July 15, 2016

I've saved the best, or at least the most grotesque, for last.
1978.
I was doing a pilot with Ted Knight that became a series that lasted for six episodes on CBS.
It was called "The Ted Knight Show".
Ted played the head of an escort service.
The kind that people thought didn't exist.
The kind that didn't involve prostitution.
But they in fact did exist.
Ted was very funny playing this stuffy, no nonsense boss.
The idea for the pilot was one that I witnessed by watching Lynn Redgrave and her husband talk about it on "Tomorrow with Tom Snyder".
Lynn Redgrave's husband had actually worked as one of those escorts at one of those respectable kinds.
His job, one evening, was to accompany his female client, a fairly young girl, to her parents house for dinner. He was to be introduced as her new fiancée.
This ruse was contrived so that he would be so obnoxious that her parents would relent and give their blessing to her real boyfriend, who they also disapproved of, but not nearly as much.
And it worked.
We thought that this would be a natural for Ted Knight, who has already been established as
Mr. Stuffy, Mr. Dignity. But he allowed himself to be pressed into service for this gig, dreading it at every turn.
We play out the scene, and it was hilarious.
It culminated with dessert.
It was the father's birthday and they wheeled out a huge seven layer birthday cake.
Ted, commenting on how great it looked, proceeded to lean over it and take a huge bite directly out
of the cake.
No plate, just directly out of the cake.
In situations like this, the prop man has to have at least six spare cakes on hand in case something goes wrong during the filming .
And he had six spare cakes.
But at the first run-through for the writers, we used a cake that looked like all the others.
And Ted took a huge bite into it.
The only problem was that this cake was made out of cement.
And you could hear Ted's teeth practically shatter as he bit into it.
Nobody had gone to the trouble of telling Ted it was not a real cake.
Fortunately, no serious damage was done, but really, the level of stupidity was off the charts.
All that was required was for the prop man to have read the script.
But it was too much trouble.
I dare anybody to top that one.

My books, "Show Runner" and it's sequel, "Show Runner Two", can be found at the Amazon Kindle Store.
Along with the newer ones, "The Man Is Dead", and "Report Cards".
They are all compilations of blog entries that have since been removed from the blog.
So this is the only way you can find them.
You can search by typing in my name, Cindy Williams, Laverne and Shirley, The Odd Couple, or Happy Days.
Check them out.
You don't need a Kindle machine to download them.
Just get the free app from Kindle, and they can be downloaded to an IPhone, IPad, or Blackberry.
The paperbacks, "Mark Rothman's Essays" and my new novel, "I'm Not Garbo" are not e-books.
But they are available for people without Kindle.
I have many readings and signings lined up for those, and the thing about Kindle is you can't sign one.
If you'd like one of the paperbacks, personally autographed, contact me at macchus999@comcast.net
And now, we've got my reading of my "Laverne and Shirley Movie" screenplay on YouTube.
The phone number for tickets for my play, "Who Wants Fame?" beginning July 30th in Detroit, is 248-579-3365. If you're in the area, you'll have a great time.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friday, July 8, 2016

Okay. I was producing "Happy Days".
We were doing an episode where Ralph Malph was trying to impress a girl.
The girl was played by Amy Irving.
I'm sure it's something she's still trying to live down.
We wanted to get a pair of those eyeglasses that has Slinky eyeballs.
I mean what's more funny and character-driven than that?
We went to our prop man, the less-than-legendary Gene Gossert.
Gene was ancient then, and was, among other things the prop man for "The Real McCoys".
And he swore up and down that they don't make the Slinky eyeballs glasses anymore.
He then fished out this pair of glasses that had little wings attached to the upper corners.
And they sparkled. And they weren't the least bit funny.
But Gene then swore up and down that they were just as good.
Who were we to argue?
I mean, the man worked with Walter Brennan, and all.
So we were stuck and went with the glasses with the wings that sparkled.
It got nothing.
It died like a dog in front of the live audience.
They all knew better than Gene Gossert.
Cut to: a week later. I'm on Hollywood Boulevard, going to one of my favorite movie memorabilia
shops, Larry Edmunds Bookstore.
Right there in the front window are the eyeglasses with the Slinky eyeballs.
Not only do they still make them, but they only cost twenty bucks.
Another example of the prop man simply wanting to make his own life easier by not doing his job.
I thought about buying a pair for each of the writers to wear at the next run-through, but I honestly thought he might have been so dense that he wouldn't have even realized that he was being mocked.
So I spared him the embarrassment that only we had by using those ersatz glasses.
There will be one more of these next time.

My books, "Show Runner" and it's sequel, "Show Runner Two", can be found at the Amazon Kindle Store.
Along with the newer ones, "The Man Is Dead", and "Report Cards".
They are all compilations of blog entries that have since been removed from the blog.
So this is the only way you can find them.
You can search by typing in my name, Cindy Williams, Laverne and Shirley, The Odd Couple, or Happy Days.
Check them out.
You don't need a Kindle machine to download them.
Just get the free app from Kindle, and they can be downloaded to an IPhone, IPad, or Blackberry.
The paperbacks, "Mark Rothman's Essays" and my new novel, "I'm Not Garbo" are not e-books.
But they are available for people without Kindle.
I have many readings and signings lined up for those, and the thing about Kindle is you can't sign one.
If you'd like one of the paperbacks, personally autographed, contact me at macchus999@comcast.net
And now, we've got my reading of my "Laverne and Shirley Movie" screenplay on YouTube.
The phone number for tickets for my play, "Who Wants Fame?" beginning July 30th in Detroit, is 248-579-3365. If you're in the area, you'll have a great time.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friday, July 1, 2016

In a previous production of my upcoming play, my set decorator doubled as my prop person.
She was very much into making "artistic choices".
Regardless of their effects on the play.
The results were way too surreal and artsy-fartsy.
There is nothing surreal about this play.
It is totally steeped in realism.
There is a joke right at the beginning of the play that establishes it's locale as Los Angeles.
Outside the apartment window, at a proper distance, is the "Hollywood" sign.
But all that can be seen are the last three letters: O-O-D. Ood.
There are actual locations in L.A. that have this view.
The set decorator's "artistic choice" was to have the O-O-D sign appear right outside the window.
In huge letters.
There are no interior locations in that area that are that close to the "Hollywood" sign.
So it was totally surreal.
But it was too late to do anything about it.
It was horrible.
A major prop in the play is a ceramic giraffe.
The "artistic choice" here was to create a ceramic giraffe that was one color: dark brown.
I asked the prop person "How many dark brown giraffes have you seen in life?"
She, of course, replied "It's my artistic choice",
I replied "Your artistic choice doesn't inform anyone in the audience the opportunity to realize that it is a giraffe".
I had to insist that she turn it into a traditional two-toned giraffe.
Which she did, quite grudgingly.
If you come to the upcoming production in Detroit at the end of the month, you will see an O-O-D
in proper proportion and a two toned giraffe.
And we'll have a prop person with absolutely no ego.
How refreshing.
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My books, "Show Runner" and it's sequel, "Show Runner Two", can be found at the Amazon Kindle Store.
Along with the newer ones, "The Man Is Dead", and "Report Cards".
They are all compilations of blog entries that have since been removed from the blog.
So this is the only way you can find them.
You can search by typing in my name, Cindy Williams, Laverne and Shirley, The Odd Couple, or Happy Days.
Check them out.
You don't need a Kindle machine to download them.
Just get the free app from Kindle, and they can be downloaded to an IPhone, IPad, or Blackberry.
The paperbacks, "Mark Rothman's Essays" and my new novel, "I'm Not Garbo" are not e-books.
But they are available for people without Kindle.
I have many readings and signings lined up for those, and the thing about Kindle is you can't sign one.
If you'd like one of the paperbacks, personally autographed, contact me at macchus999@comcast.net
And now, we've got my reading of my "Laverne and Shirley Movie" screenplay on YouTube.
The phone number for tickets for my play, "Who Wants Fame?" beginning July 30th in Detroit, is 248-579-3365. If you're in the area, you'll have a great time.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About Me

Hi. I am, according to my Wikipedia entry,(which I did not create) a noted television writer, playwright, screenwriter, and occasional actor.
You can Google me or go to the IMDB to get my credits, and you can come here to get my opinions on things, which I'll try to express eloquently. Hopefully I'll succeed. You can also e-mail me at macchus999@aol.com. Perhaps my biggest claim to fame is being responsible, for about six months in 1975, while Head Writer for the "Happy Days" TV series, for Americans saying to each other "Sit on it."